Play, property and friendship

I generally try to avoid blogging about our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter A, since (a) all parents find their own progeny to be far more interesting than most people find someone else's, (b) I don't really want to populate the internet with embarrassing stories from her childhood and (c) my wife already does a fair bit of it over here. But today I am making an exception to recount an incident that occurred recently, which is actually mainly about the (anonymous) mother of another child.

A and I were having a delightful time playing at a favourite local playground (the images show the view from this park, albeit last Autumn). We were approached by another little girl, who turned out to be a three year old called E. Little E was delightful: friendly, confident, inquisitive, communicative, sensitive, respectful - in short the very model of what I would hope A is like at that age. Being slightly older, she was able to initiate and demonstrate many of the fundamental skills required for building a friendship. A was quickly besotted and having a great time gladly sharing her toys with her new buddy. E would occasionally run back to her mother to get another biscuit while A was eating some grapes out of a container.

E then suggested that she and A might go for a walk to play in another part of the playground. There followed a brief negotiation where E offered to carry some of the items that A often likes to take with her at the moment (a small bag and a tiny basket). A declined and said she'd prefer to hold them herself. E then offered to carry A's container of grapes in order to facilitate the move. This was gladly accepted and off they went, A only pausing momentarily to turn and wave goodbye to me. I let them go, confident that they would still only be metres away and in sight of perhaps a dozen other parents, while thinking that it might be good for A to have a little space to observe the new relational skills without me looking her shoulder.

Ten seconds later, I heard angry shouting.

It took another couple of moments for me to realise that the shouting was directed at E. Her mother was very loudly berating her for purloining another child's property, telling her to "return the grapes at once" and to apologise for taking them.

I ran to clear up the confusion. E's mother was dragging her by the hand to find the owner of the stolen goods while, unnoticed, A trailed after them looking very confused. E was sobbing loudly and A was on the verge of doing likewise.

I tried to explain as briefly as I could, highlighting just how exemplary E's behaviour had been and that the grapes were freely shared, not pilfered. The mother, realising her mistake, turned to comfort E, though without apologising to her. I tried to help A understand what had happened. When E's mother went off chasing an even younger child moments later, E stayed and was able to articulate that her mother had misunderstood and that her anger was clearly unjustified.

Ten minutes later, the two girls were very happily playing again and E's mother expressed her embarrassment and regret to me. Whether she apologised to E I am unsure, though in her defence I do suspect that the incident was out of character, not least due to how well adjusted and emotionally intelligent E appeared throughout the whole episode, indicating the likelihood of some emotionally intelligent parenting. So the following point is not really about this mother in particular, but uses this morning as an attempt to illustrate something broader.

First, it is worth noting that at one level, both E's mother and I were motivated by concern for the other's child. She didn't want A to have had her goods stolen and I didn't want E falsely accused. At a deeper level, we were presumably also both even more concerned about our own child's moral formation. She didn't want to raise a thief. I didn't want my child to think twice about sharing her blessings with others.

So what then differed? Our vision of the world in which these moral concerns were expressed. Now obviously, I was privy to the earlier interaction in which A had freely accepted E's offer to carry the grapes while E's mother was not and so I had a better idea of how to "read" the sight of E carrying food that didn't belong to her. But I wonder whether there might not be more to the difference than this.

The experience lead me to reflect upon our culture's obsession with private property. Why would this mother (who as far as I can tell, was otherwise sane and sensitive) react so explosively to seeing her child holding an unfamiliar object? The outburst may perhaps have had its origins elsewhere: frustration at the younger sibling or at some other unrelated situation which found its unjust expression against E. But the fact that the trigger for this display was an apparent breach of ownership rights concerning a tiny handful of slightly soggy grapes could also suggest that the policing of the concept and practices of exclusive property is very important for E's mother, so important that she would trample all over a nascent friendship to enforce them. Property is an important ethical concept, but it is possible to get a little too excited about it and lose sight of the bigger picture.

And don't come back

This is the day that the LORD has made;
    Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

- Psalm 118.24.

This time five years ago, I was receiving weekly doses of poison and daily radiation burns to my chest after being diagnosed with a rapidly growing malignant tumour just above my heart and invading my left bronchial tube. Today, I went into an oncologist's office and was told not to return, as five years of follow up is enough.

Although it is still possible for me to experience relapse, the chances are that any cancer now found in my body is more likely to be a new growth than a renewal of the one that was well on its way to killing me in 2006/07. I am obviously delighted to reach this milestone and continue to receive each day as a gift. I did not deserve to live, did not earn my reprieve, did not qualify for healing through the quality of my faith. Faced with a very rare form of cancer (numerous specialists have given me the impression that I'm one in a million), medical science took its best (highly educated) guess as to treatment and it worked beyond all expectations.

And so praise God for life, for health, for wonderful support from family, friends and even strangers, for medical specialists and all the care I have received over five years from dozens of healthcare professionals both in Oz and the UK and for public healthcare that has meant my total out of pocket expenses have been AUD $0 + GBP £0 for treatments that probably cost tens of thousands (thanks fellow tax-payers!).

Yet the experience continues to have its shadows. Given that the first side-effect mentioned on the consent forms I signed for both chemotherapy and radiotherapy is that those treatments are themselves carcinogenic, cancer is still quite likely to be part of my future, as is reduced life-expectancy. I am also aware of the costs the illness and treatment have brought to my health in other ways; being poisoned and burned are not generally conducive to good health (I've always thought that Nietzsche's boast that whatever did not kill him could only make him stronger was one of his sillier ones).

And I am not the same man I was. Being gravely sick has reconfigured my emotional and spiritual life, not to mention shaping my academic interests. For much of this I am grateful (and this is undoubtedly the true referent of Nietzsche's comment), especially for the reminder of my own frail mortality and the liberating realisation that survival is not our highest priority. These are important lessons that I hope always to keep close to hand. Has the experience also made me more pessimistic about our future prospects? Given that being ill significantly overlapped with the period during which I began investigating ecological and resources predicaments in greater depth, it is hard to tell whether the chicken or the egg came first.

The significance of my reaching this milestone was brought home powerfully to me a day or two ago when I came across the story of Kristian Anderson, a Sydney Christian man in his 30s with a wife and young kids, and who died from cancer two days ago. Kristian recorded more than two years of his physical, emotional and spiritual journey since diagnosis on a blog called How the Light Gets In (H/t Andrew Paterson). I ran out of tissues while reading it. I never met him, but I thank God for his life and witness, even amidst great darkness, and I pray for his widow and little boys.

Life is a precious gift. Let us rejoice in each day we receive.

Not dead yet

The last ten days have included a fascinating conference (which I really should have plugged a few more times; more on that anon, probably), the arrival of some old friends in Edinburgh and a bout of unwelcome illness that have together conspired to keep me offline. The previous two posts were scheduled to go up ahead of time and I am only just back on very briefly today. It may be another day or two before I get a chance to post anything as I try to catch up.

Back again

For the last few weeks, I have been away on family holidays and so please excuse my lack of replies to comments, emails and even (possibly) phone calls (I managed to lose my mobile a few days into the trip and am currently trying to get my old number working on a borrowed replacement handset). Please also forgive (or perhaps ignore) some recent posts that may have been a little sloppy as I hastily composed these before my departure and scheduled them to go up while I was absent.

Studies in Christian Ethics: Climate change

The February 2011 edition of the journal Studies in Christian Ethics is now available, and contains papers published from the proceedings of the annual conference of the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics held in September last year on the topic of climate change. The table of contents is available here, though you'll need to be a subscriber to SAGE to be able to see it (which for most people means accessing through a university or college).

My contribution is a piece called "Doom, Gloom and Empty Tombs: Climate Change and Fear". I don't think I'm being naughty to post the abstract.

Abstract: Anthropogenic climate change represents a deep and credible threat to human society in a variety of ways. The particular shape of this threat is historically novel and commonly associated with experiences of fear mixed with both guilt and impotence. What is the moral significance of this fear in a faithful Christian response to anthropogenic climate change? How is the Christian ethicist to locate fears of climate change? How can such fears become constructive for, rather than destructive of, ethical thought? Taking Hans Urs von Balthasar’s short text, The Christian and Anxiety, as a dialogue partner, this paper will explore healthy and unhealthy modes of alarm in the face of an increasingly disrupted climate. Balthasar argues that Christ’s own anxiety during his passion liberates believers from certain kinds of fear, and then opens the creative possibility of entering into the fears of one’s neighbour as an expression of love.
Small minds may be amused by the fact that I managed to get a rude word published in an ethics journal (twice: pp. 78-79). I considered giving this post the title "How to get shit published", but then rejected it as puerile.

UPDATE: I have now received the published PDF of the article and am happy to consider sharing it on a personal basis upon request.

A white Christmas in a warming world

The answer to Wednesday's riddle ("what has six arms, can swallow farms and a million makes a man?") was snowflakes.

At the end of last month, I raised the question many people in the UK are asking at the moment: where did the global warming go? It started snowing in November and here in Edinburgh there have been numerous significant falls over the last three weeks, with snow continuously on the ground the whole time. I've lost count of the days that have dropped below -10ºC and only one or two have nudged above freezing. Transport in the UK has been thrown into chaos, with trains cancelled or delayed, roads blocked, airports disrupted. Heathrow airport, the largest in the world, was closed or running at reduced capacity for much of the last week.*
*This affected us personally since my sister, who was here visiting us until yesterday, was very unsure whether she would be home for Christmas with her husband and children. As it turned out, her flight from Edinburgh to Heathrow was cancelled, and the train which she took instead was delayed by three or four hours, but she managed to get home.

So far, it is shaping up to be the coldest UK December on record, running about 5ºC below average. The last three years have all been significantly colder than average. Prior to that, the trend was for warming winters, which was quite consistent with the widespread scientific understanding anthropogenic climate change, which predicts more warming at night, at the poles and during winters (all patterns evident in the temperature record and which rule out solar forcing as the main culprit). Indeed, only a couple of years ago, the MET Office infamously predicted, "Children just aren't going to know what snow is". So what happened?

I suggested back in November that a pattern of WACCy weather (Warm Arctic Cold Continents) might help us understand this phenomenon. Where did the warming go? The UK is five degrees colder than usual, but much of Greenland is up to 15 degrees warmer than the long term average, and large parts of the Arctic Ocean are more than 10 above average. Indeed, recent studies suggest a link between declining Arctic sea ice and patterns of cold air for the continents in northern latitudes. With less sea ice over the Arctic ocean, more heat escapes from the water (which is obviously no colder than 0ºC) to the atmosphere (which is, as one would expect during an Arctic winter, generally well below zero). This creates high pressure cells, which disrupt the usual wind patterns and lead to the much-warmer-than-usual-but-still-freezing Arctic air being pushed further south over the continents. When this freezing air coming down over the UK runs into moist air being brought from the Atlantic, we get significant (by UK standards) dumps of snow, bringing the country to a standstill.

All this has been mentioned numerous times in scientific papers and reports from NOAA and NASA (and again), but has barely rated a mention in most mainstream media (Monbiot is a notable exception).

Is this having one's cake and eating it if both warmer and colder winters are evidence of climate change? No, because climatologists have never claimed that every place would be affected in the same way at the same time. Global warming is (a) global and (b) only one of the effects of climate change. Climate change means climate disruption, increasingly dramatic shifts from the relative climatic stability of the Holocene that has nurtured the birth of agriculture and the rise of human civilisation over the last ten thousand years or so. Is using the term "climate change" in preference to "global warming" a con to save face? Not at all, since the terms mean slightly different things and both have been in use for decades. (Or if you'd prefer, here's a video response.)

It is not yet clear whether this pattern is likely to become the new normal UK winter as Arctic sea ice continues its apparent death spiral, or whether other factors will prove more significant. On that question hang billions of pounds in infrastructure decisions.

And so tomorrow in Edinburgh, there will probably be snow on the ground for Christmas: a white Christmas in a warming world.*
*I realise that, technically, bookmakers and the MET Office define a white Christmas as at least a single snowflake reaching the ground somewhere in the UK, but snow on the ground is good enough for this Aussie.

Why I am neither left nor right: where I stand politically

Christians and partisanship
In the comments of a recent post, I claimed that I was a Christian "who was neither left nor right".

As a result, a friend wrote to me expressing concern that I was perhaps being disingenuous about my loyalties considering various experiences and conversations we'd shared in which I'd been critical of one "side" of Australian politics and supportive of the other. My friend encouraged me to be upfront about where I am coming from politically and so I thought I would take the opportunity to do so, if for no other reason than to give a little more context for any comments I might make on policy or party-political issues from time to time.

When I said that I was a Christian who was neither left nor right, I meant it. I didn't mean that I have no political opinions or am apolitical, but that I generally try to be non-partisan for what I believe are good theological reasons.

As a disciple of Jesus, my political allegiance is to him alone. He has received all authority in heaven and on earth from the Father and so all political authorities that remain in this present age have been put on notice. What authority they have is derivative from his and is strictly temporary. Their jurisdiction is similarly limited. And Christians may not place in them anything other than small and provisional hopes, nor expect of them anything other than partial victories and defeats in a world marred by sin and indeed should expect them sometimes to resemble the powers and principalities arranged against God. So any identification by a Christian with a political cause will be under these caveats.
Or, to put this another way, it may come as no surprise that I broadly agree with my PhD supervisor Oliver O'Donovan. For a decent summary of some of his key ideas, see this essay by Andrew Errington, which is Andrew's work but draws upon O'Donovan fairly extensively.

Neither right nor left
I reject being straightforwardly labelled as "left" or "right" for two reasons, one philosophical and one theological. First, I don't think that the spectrums of left/right or conservative/progressive are particularly useful conceptual tools for discussing a political field that has more than one dimension. At best they are a commonly-accepted shorthand, but they often obscure as much as they reveal. The two-party system that dominates politics in Australia, the US and the UK (the three arenas with which I am most familiar) generally simplifies all issues to two positions. Sometimes these two positions are actually very close to one another, but this is hidden by constant focus on their slight distinctions. This represents a (perhaps partially inevitable) dumbing down of political discourse and debate and is not helped by mainstream media sources that are more interested in profit than accuracy or nuance.

But more importantly, speaking theologically and ethically, none of the parties of which I'm aware manifestly represents the cause of the gospel. Each holds positions and priorities that as a Christian I find disappointing, disturbing or repulsive. Furthermore, neither the agenda of the "left" nor the "right" can be entirely adopted or entirely demonised by thoughtful followers of a crucified and risen king. Both contain worthwhile attempts to defend aspects of the good creation. In a world of complex goods, there will rarely be policies that are unambiguous expressions of justice, truth and the common good. By the same token, the parasitic nature of evil means that even the worst policies will lay claim to some good thing, even if, in seeking to defend it, they trample other (and perhaps more important) goods. When the complexity of the moral and political field is combined with human sinfulness and the impossibility of any leader (other than Jesus) being the Messiah,* then no party or "side" can claim the obvious, exclusive, permanent or total commitment of Christians.
*Indeed, some of my longer blog pieces have been critiquing implicit messianism, whether associated with leaders or nations. Here is one example and here is another.

Consequently, voting is only ever possible while holding one's nose. I've rarely voted with much confidence and never without some degree of regret, often quite deep. And remember, voting is only the tip of the iceberg when considering what makes for a healthy political authority. But if and when you do vote, it ought to be done thoughtfully and out of concern for neighbour.

Politics and love
Indeed, all Christian political activity (which may begin with voting, but is not at all limited to it) is a response to the royal law of love - love for God and neighbour. This is also what prevents political apathy or disengagement, or a total retreat into cynicism. To write off the political authorities as irrelevant, uselessly corrupt or ubiquitously anti-Christ frequently means to abandon one's neighbour to the strongest or sneakiest bully. Of course, political engagement is neither the start nor the end of the love command, and it is a task that falls on the church community as a body, in which different members may play different roles. It is not the case that every member needs to be equally well informed or passionate about every political matter.

A significant part of Christian political responsibility will be warning political authorities when they are overstepping their jurisdiction, or when they are neglecting to protect the vulnerable and uphold justice. And so part of this task is unavoidably critical. But it is also important to seek ways forward, to offer creative suggestions, to pursue the best that it is currently possible to achieve, to engage in the often messy and always imperfectible pursuit of justice. And so it may be the case that some Christians will be called into seeking elected office, into partial and provisional loyalty to a party or cause for the sake of the common good. Being a Christian ruler is not necessarily oxymoronic.

My recent political activity
On my blog I have made positive comments about a variety of political parties and individuals and not all on one "side". I have supported particular campaigns by various groups who in some cases identify as either "progressive" or "conservative", but this doesn't mean I endorse everything they do.

I don't think that I have ever campaigned on my blog for a particular party or individual, but even if I have (or do so in future), this would represent a provisional and highly fallible position based on my evaluation of current needs and opportunities.

I am not claiming to be a swinging voter (though I have voted for various parties at various times) nor to be a centrist (though, like the "left" and "right", it has some good points). I am not saying that I have no preferences or sit on the fence.

At different times I have written to MPs, councillors, government and shadow ministers and prime ministers of many parties (in a number of countries) seeking to put forward particular policies, offer praise and humbly present criticism. Always I have promised to pray for them and I try to keep that promise.

At times I have expressed frustration at how common it is in some circles to assume that Christian discipleship entails partisan political conservatism (though I am just as frustrated by the opposite assumption, it is simply a little less prominent at this point in history). I have argued against the idea that most issues have a single and obvious Christian position; I think that it is possible for biblical Christians of goodwill and honesty to disagree on the policies that will best uphold and pursue justice. I reject the assumption that only certain issues are "Christian", or that there are a small range of issues (generally to do with sexuality) on which Christians ought primarily or exclusively to base their voting and other political activity. And, perhaps quite obviously, I believe that there are some issues (such as ecology) that Christians have generally not paid enough attention to.

So if you had me pegged, pigeonholed or stereotyped, I hope that this helps to clarify where I do (and don't!) stand politically. I am not trying to hide anything; I am sorry if I have not always been sufficiently clear on these matters.
UPDATE: a slightly modified version of this post has been included on the CPX site as part of their election coverage.

192 steps & 63 pubs

We recently moved house, and our new place is considerably closer to college, meaning I can go home for lunch. There are only 192 steps from my desk to my front door. Our new home has some other benefits, such as being in a listed building as part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, being within spitting distance of Scotland's most visited paid tourist attraction,* being next door to a pub that has been in recorded existence since 1516** and being within 500 metres of (at last count) 63 pubs, bars or taverns.***
*Under favourable wind conditions.
**It may be an even older establishment; that is the first record of its name and location.
***No, I haven't been to them all (yet?). The count is based on memory from years walking around the area, supplemented by a couple of minutes looking at Google Maps.

Ten years

Ten years ago today, I was at St Mary's, Waverley, making some promises that truly make little sense except that they attempt to echo something of God's passionate commitment to us.

Here I am, ten years older, and still just as reliant upon the promises of God in order to keep my promises - and to renew them each time I fail.
Image by Scott Callaghan.

Barneys new design

I started this blog just days after our long term church home at St Barnabas' Anglican Church, Broadway in Sydney (a.k.a. Barneys) was burned down early one morning by an accidental fire. The building had been about 150 years old and was one of the better known churches near the centre of Sydney. Some of my first posts reflected on the destruction of the building, and I have continued to follow the unfolding story, even though we left Barneys to serve at All Souls Anglican Church in Leichhardt and have since moved on to St Paul's and St George's Scottish Episcopal Church in Edinburgh.

With that brief church bio out of the way, I can get to what I wanted to say, which is that the design for the new Barneys building is complete and approved, and funds are already being raised. You can find out more under raise the roof on the Barneys website. But to get a very quick idea, take a look at this flythrough video:

More details about the design can be found here.
Image by MER.

Camus on turning thirty

"Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd."

- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (trans. Justin O'Brien, London: Penguin, 1975 [1942]), 20.

Today is my birthday. I am not thirty and do not assert my youth. But I am indeed absurd.

Slow and steady... is a difficult pace

I have long known that my writing skills are more hare than tortoise. I seem to work in fairly unpredictable bursts of productivity, or rather, depressingly predictable ones during the last minute before a deadline. Over the years I have oscillated between attempts at reform and embracing this pattern. I have known for some time that I probably wanted to do a PhD and also knew that while last minute sprints could get me through endless essays during my nine undergraduate years, you can't sprint through a PhD.

I have tried writing every day* (and failed). I have tried setting myself shorter term deadlines (and failed). I have tried asking for external deadlines (and failed). I have tried treating my study more like work (and failed). I have tried banning distractions (and failed). I guess I'm looking for new inspiration. How have others wrestled with this issue? What have been your successes and failures?
*Probably the closest was when I was blogging more regularly and would aim to put up at least 5 posts each week. You can see by the numbers on the sidebar which months have been more or less productive.

When bloggers collide

Today I met Eric Daryl Meyer, author of a few words, who is over in sunny Scotland for a conference in a few days (if he can bear to bring an end to the highland trekking he's about to begin).

It would be interesting one day to try to work out the number of people I've eventually met in the flesh having first connected through blogs. I suspect it may already be more than twenty. Such meetings are always a delightful surprise as photos come to life.

They are also another reminder of the blessings of avoiding pseudonyms. If you're hiding on the internet behind a profile or simply remaining anonymous for no good reason, feel free to come out and join in the party where things (and people) are called by their real name. We won't bite. And if we do, you know where we live.

Audrey Alice Momsen (26th August 1919 - 19th May 2009)

"But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died."

-1 Thessalonians 4.13-14.

My grandmother fell asleep in Christ today. She was eighty-nine and leaves five children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I thank God for her life of loving service and for her trust in Jesus. I will miss her. But I grieve with hope because at Jesus' return God will bring with him those who have died, including her. May she rest until the day when death is no more. Come, Lord Jesus.

Gavin Wilcox (1962-2008)

I have just heard that Gavin Wilcox died of cancer last Thursday morning. Gavin was rector of All Saints' Anglican, Nowra from 2002 until retiring earlier this year due to his declining health. Between 1997 and 2002 he had been an assistant minister at St Barnabas', Broadway, which is where Jessica and I met him when we joined the church in 2000. The funeral will be held at 1pm at All Saints’, Nowra on Tuesday, December 23. He will be much missed.

I thank God for the ways he blessed me and many others through Gavin. One more reason to look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

On Rowan Williams: now available

For those who may be interested, Wipf and Stock have recently published a new volume of essays titled On Rowan Williams: Critical Essays, edited by the irrepressible Dr Matheson Russell from the University of Auckland. The collection includes nine contributions from young Australian Anglicans, such as Ben Myers (Faith and Theology), Michael Jensen (The Blogging Parson), Andrew Cameron, Greg Clarke and more. There is a foreword by Oliver O'Donovan and a twenty-eight page bibliography of all Williams' published works. Here is the blurb from the publisher's site:

Theologian, poet, public intellectual, and clergyman, Rowan Williams is one of the leading lights of contemporary British theology. He has published over twenty books and one hundred scholarly essays in a distinguished career as an academic theologian that culminated in his appointment as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. Williams left this post to serve in the Anglican Church, first as Bishop of Monmouth, then Archbishop of Wales, before finally being enthroned in 2003 as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.

In this collection of essays, a talented younger generation of Australian theologians critically analyzes the themes that bind together Williams's theology. These sympathetic yet probing essays traverse the full breadth of Williams's work, from his studies on Arius, the Desert Fathers, Hegel, and Trinitarian theology to his more pastoral writings on spirituality, sexuality, politics, and the Anglican Church.

Here is what you get:

Foreword: Australia on Rowan Williams • Oliver O’Donovan
Introduction • Matheson Russell
1. The Ecclesiology of Rowan Williams • Rhys Bezzant
2. The Hidden Center: Trinity and incarnation in the Negative (and Positive) Theology of Rowan Williams • Andrew Moody
3. Disruptive History: Rowan Williams on Heresy and Orthodoxy • Benjamin Myers
4. Krisis? Kritik?: Judgment and Jesus in the Theology of Rowan Williams • Michael Jensen
5. Dispossession and Negotiation: Rowan Williams on Hegel and Political Theology • Matheson Russell
6. The Humanity of Godliness: Spirituality and Creatureliness in Rowan Williams • Byron Smith
7. Desire and Grace: Rowan Williams and the Search for Bodily Wholeness • Andrew Cameron
8. Rowan Williams on War and Peace • Tom Frame
9. The Beauty of God in Cairo and Islamabad: Rowan Williams as Apologist • Greg Clarke

The price is a mere US$29.00, or $23.20 from the Wipf and Stock website. Unfortunately, if you happen to live outside the US, then you'll need to contact the publisher to ask for a special order form (and pay approx US$13 in P&H). I have no idea why any non-US resident would consider buying a book about a Brit by a bunch of Aussies.
Twenty points if you purchase a copy of the book. Prove it by quoting the first sentence of a random page in the book. (Hahaha, what a brilliant marketing ploy!)

UPDATE: A nice review by Bruce Kaye.

Debate aftermath

I mentioned the other day that my friend Mike Paget was going to be debating an atheist on the topic "Which makes more sense: Atheism or Christianity?". Since one always comes up with the best replies about 20 minutes too late, Mike is putting some post-debate thoughts on his blog: "Oh, and another thing...". I bet McCain wishes he could do the same.

Since tomorrow is my birthday (divisible by both 5 and 3), I am about to pick up a hire car for a weekend away with Jess at a mystery destination (if I tell you, then future points might be too easy). Cue birthday wishes (I felt that those without Facebook might like some gratuitous help). See you next week.
Speaking of points, I'll give fifteen to the first to correctly guess the location this Sydney shot was taken from (on my birthday last year).

Review and restart

It has been a few weeks since the last post. And before that, posts were thin on the ground for some time. Where have I been? What have I been doing?

• Packing and preparing to leave our beloved home in Sydney;
• Travelling in India, visiting old friends and meeting some locals;
• Moving into Edinburgh, staying first with a friend of a friend and then moving into longer term accommodation;
• Conferencing in Rome, concerning which I might post a few thoughts in the coming days;
• Helping Jess start a new blog;
• Conferencing again, this time in Dunblane on a more intimate scale with my supervisor, two other academics (including his wife) and a few PhD students from Edinburgh and Oxford;
• Enrolling and being oriented at New College for my PhD studies in the School of Divinity at Edinburgh University;
• Adjusting to a new city, its geography, topography, demography and public transport; and
• Waiting for a reliable broadband connection to be set up.

Thus, I haven't had much space or opportunity to blog, and the little time I have been able to grab on the net has largely consisted of writing emails and Skyping. Hopefully, I will now have a little more space and things can get rolling once more. Enough of the excuses; time to re-start.

All roads lead to...

...the Rome theology and philosophy conference, The Grandeur of Reason. At least, my road leads there this week. Speakers include Agamben, Hauerwas, Milbank and O'Donovan, as well as Myers, Russell and many more - should be a good week! Blogging will resume upon my return.

UPDATE: Conference programme now available to download [102KB], H/T Ben.

Welcome to Edinburgh

Having spent the last few weeks in India, it is something of a relief (and a disappointment) to be back in a country in which seat belts, traffic lanes and stop signs are not optional and in which long pants and a collar in stifling heat and humidity are. Not that Scotland has any stifling heat or humidity, and that is the biggest relief of all. Nevertheless, we had a great time in India (thanks to the Toulmins, our wonderful and very educational hosts) and now have a slightly larger appreciation of the enormous diversity and vibrant colour of the world's largest democracy.

We arrived in Edinburgh late on Sunday night, and Jess celebrated her natal anniversary the next day and started her new job two days later. Our newly adopted home town is very beautiful, very walkable and so far, very grey.

However, I don't intend for this blog to be filled with personal updates. For that, you will have to wait for Jessica's new blog, due to be launched in the next few days (d.v.), or become friends with me on Facebook. Regular posting will resume shortly, and as always, there is more to come.